Forum:25: Dragons of Hatred and Sacrifice
The group fought Depyat (D5) of the Dead Dragons, a savage and hateful man charged with the powers of the dead and wielding an elven curve blade capable of distorting and eliminating magical energies. Though the extent of his ire was focused upon Yahtuh, a good application of tactics and the group's overall resilience won the day, and a heavily wounded D5 was forced to his knees. At that point, however, Detri (D3) arrived via teleportation to intervene, and halted his comrade through some manner of compulsion. As he prepared to leave, however, Artyom was inspired by a divine presence to speak up and stop D3 from leaving, and thus acquired the Heroic Action known as Dragon's Voice, which compelled all who heard Artyom speak to stop and speak to him. In the ensuing discussion, the group learned many things about the nature of the conflict and D3's own character. Apparently the drow had been historically responsible for numerous incursions and minor wars of aggression into surface elf territory due to the relatively small amount of arable land in Snezhny both above and underground. This culminated in an invasion of the nearby sovereign land of Nordica, and the Elven military responded with a coup against their own monarchy, the installation of a military commander as head of state, and the seizure of Nordica in order to prevent the drow from making further progress. Though the party pointed out that ending the war now should accomplish the goal of ensuring enough land for the next several generations of drow and elves, owing to the horrendous length and mortality rate of the conflict, D3 flatly stated that to ensure the future of Snezhny belongs to the elves, his own high command has made their new goal the complete subjugation, or genocide, of every drow in Snezhny. D3, for his own part, claimed that while he understood to some extent where the party is coming from, his own will has no bearing on what the elven high command does. His role as a Dead Dragon is to sacrifice everything that belongs to him to see the plans of the military brought to fruition, and to serve Snezhny until he has nothing left to offer. Ten-Tongues recognized these as the words and thoughts of a servant of Genbu who has had "Self" taken away from him, and D3 agreed, claiming that Genbu has informed him of numerous things concerning the war, as well as the intent of the group. He finished by claiming that the south has nothing left to offer the people of Snezhny, and that the fate of Snezhny must be left to Snezhnians. To this end, he offered an exchange to the party: He would give them access to the prisoners from Librem that Snezhny had captured if they would leave the country, at least temporarily. He then gave them a medallion depicting a golden eagle, claiming that it would grant them passage through Nordica's ports into the Snezhnian Gulag. He said that the prisoners being held there were under light guard, but the nature of the Gulag is such that escape from the building itself is next to impossible. As their discussion drew to a close, D3 admitted that he may have misjudged Artyom and the group's capability, and that Artyom in particular had the makings of a fine patriot, but when the Dragon Voice ended he teleported away with D5 without another word. The group then contacted the Sagitta for pickup and went to investigate the grotto that D5 was preparing to enter when they arrived. The group was immediately ambushed by drow who asked why the group had come, but upon removal of the cloak of darkness, they recognized Emil, who was now leading a group of hundreds of drow from the enclave known as Kamil. He seemed to have mellowed considerably, and even Yahtuh noted the fading of his wrathful nature, but his position also appeared to be causing him some turmoil as he did not know that the elves had sent D5 to eliminate his enclave. He explained that the majority of people here were escapees from the drow underground capital of Karkonen, and the nobles were currently fortifying there against both the Haka and the surface elves. The Haka, meanwhile, were now prioritizing the elimination of the nobility over defence against the elves, which they reasoned was due to elven assault becoming less and less frequent over the few weeks. The group pointed out that this could be the sign of the elves building up to something, but Emil said that they had little evidence of that and that they believed the Haka could make a more convincing case to the surface elven leaders if they were able to first secure dominion over their own territory. Curiously, Emil also mentioned that Adama's vision for the future of the drow is that of the individual drow seizing the means of production and overthrowing the entire noble structure. As such, it is apparent that the Haka's designs on the drow have more goals than simply ending the war. Furthermore, the group had managed to secure the services of talented drow and dwarven tunnelers, who they claimed could likely get the group as far as Gray Peak while avoiding attacks from the Silver Eagle, in exchange for the group's continued support against the noble regime. Lexington, however, cautioned the group about further assisting the revolutionaries, as Librem was not yet informed about the nature of the drow revolution and he did not want to further assist a regime potentially hostile to Librennian interest. The group agreed to discuss it further aboard the Sagitta, and Emil claimed that he would await their response. Finally, when boarding the Sagitta, they learned that Piano and Jack had made their way to Librennian Intelligence Command and the elven Jack wanted to speak to Artyom alone. Intelligence had arranged for the discussion to take place while the Sagitta passed south along the coast of Snezhny on the way to Nordica, where the group was hoping to learn the fate of the Librennian captives... The rewards from last session are as follows: *4500 exp per person for the defeat of D5 of the Dead Dragons *3000 gold repayment from Emil (the Lordly Raven takes 300) *The Golden Eagle Medallion - A token from D3 for passage into Nordica